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2017-02-18

Excerpt from Truth or Dare--available now!

Truth or Dare is the first book in my new trilogy--Games We Play. The series revolves around three cousins (no, that's not them on the cover, btw! Each cousin has his or her own book. ) who've recently inherited a quirky old hotel/bar/restaurant complex in the fictional town of Atlas Beach, NJ.Here's a peek:

The last of the
dishes had all been put away. The last of the guests had departed. The memorial
for Moira Walsh Gallagher was well and truly finished. At the large staff table
in the kitchen of the Wild Geese Inn, the small hotel Moira had owned and
loved, her three grandchildren shared a last glass of whiskey and a last slice
of apple pie. Pumpkin pie might have been a more traditional choice, given that
it was now just days after Thanksgiving, but Moira had never cared for pumpkin.

“If we’re really
gonna do this,” Brenda Donovan said in her usual bossy tones, “there are a few
things we’re gonna have to get straight right from the start.”

Her cousins, Luke
Kelly and Gwyneth Carmichael, exchanged a long-suffering look. Brenda was two
months older than Luke, five months older than Gwyn, so they’d never really
bought into her whole I-know-best-because-I’m-the-oldest superior attitude. You
might think after twenty-eight years, Bren would have figured that out, but say
what you will about Jersey girls, they’re stubborn as fuck. Once an idea gets
stuck in their heads, there’s very little chance of it shaking loose.

“What do you mean if we’re going to do it?” Luke glared at
his cousin. “How is that even a question? We’ve talked about running the inn
together since we were kids.”

Gwyn nodded in
agreement. “Grams could have sold the place numerous times over the years. It’s
not like there weren’t offers. She turned them all down.”

“She kept the
place going for us,” Luke added.
“Until we were ready to take over.”

“And you two think
we’re ready now?” Brenda protested. “Seriously?”

Luke scowled.
“That’s not what we’re saying. But what other choice is there?”

Brenda shook her
head. “I don’t know. Maybe we should look into some of these offers, see if any
of them are still on the table. I mean, look around you. There’s no one here.
How’re we supposed to stay in business if we don’t have any customers?”

“Of course there’s
no one here right now,” Gwyn snapped. “You didn’t expect us to have Gram’s
dinner here today and keep the restaurant open to the public at the same time,
did you?”

“And the hotel?
Did you close that too?”

Gwyn rolled her
eyes. “Don’t be dense. It’s winter. No one vacations here in the winter.”

“Exactly,” Luke
agreed. “They go to Florida or the Bahamas, places like that. That’s why so
many businesses in town are only open for the season—or only open weekends the
rest of the year.”

“We do that too,
in a way, with the rental units,” Gwyn said. “Most of them are only open in the
summer.”

“That’s right.”
Luke nodded. “Maybe we should close the hotel in the winter as well? Or only
take reservations for the weekend?”

“Oh, sure,” Gwyn
glared at him. “Great idea. The staff’ll love that.”

“It won’t help
anyway,” Brenda said, sounding gloomier by the minute. “I looked at the
numbers, you guys. We can’t afford the upkeep if we’re only open part of the
year. We need to figure out a way to bring in more customers somehow, not less.”

“The bar’s still
open,” Luke pointed out, adding, “Not tonight, obviously, but in general. And
we have customers who come in all year round.”

“But even that’s
not pulling in enough,” Brenda told him. “Sure, the bar’s helping to keep us afloat
in the off months—for now—but we’re hemorrhaging money. I don’t know how Grams
made it work without going bankrupt or taking out a mortgage. But I don’t think
even she could have kept it going much longer. She hadn’t drawn a salary in
years. Her savings are nearly gone. If this place is going to survive—not to
mention pay the three of us—we’re going to have to make some hard choices.”

“We could
advertise,” Gwyn suggested. “You know, ‘spend a romantic weekend at one of
Atlas Beach’s most historic hotels’ and that kind of thing? Or offer special, prix
fixe dinners for some of the winter holidays like, I dunno, Valentine’s Day,
for instance?”

Gwyn beamed at
him. “We could do dinners for all of those too. Also Christmas and maybe
Groundhog’s Day and—”

“Groundhog’s Day?”

“Sure. We could
make it like the movie, with a dinner dance, or auction, or whatever that was.
We could even have a screening in the game room.”

“C’mon, Brenda,”
Luke urged. “What do you say? Don’t you want to do this?”

“Of course I do.
It’s what I went to school for, isn’t it? But with the economy the way it is
and the weather we’ve had the past few years, I don’t know if it’s feasible.”

“Stop with all the
defeatist bullshit,” Gwyn said. “We need you, Brenda. I can take on a larger
role with running the hotel and everything, and Luke’s got the bar under
control.”

“Well, mostly.”
Luke shot Gwyn an apologetic look. “It could do with some repairs, new
furniture, new equipment, et cetera. And don’t look at me like that, Gwyn.
She’s not entirely wrong. There’s a lot that hasn’t been kept up with.”

“Which is why we
need Brenda,” Gwyn agreed. “Someone has to deal with the business side of
things.”

“It would be a big
adjustment,” Brenda pointed out. “I’d have to quit my job and move down here
from the city.”

“Oh, please,” Luke
said. “You’ve been telling us for years that you miss it here, that you wish
you could move back. Well, here’s your chance. And don’t even try and pretend
like you wouldn’t get a nice severance package, because I know you would.”

“Think how much
money you’d save on overhead,” Gwyn added, “if you were living here rather than
in the city. If it doesn’t pan out, you could always go back.”

“Hell, yes, I want
to do this,” Luke assured her. “I’ve always wanted my own bar, even if it is
haunted.”

“Don’t be silly,”
Gwyn told him. “The bar’s not haunted.”

“Of course it’s
not!” Brenda agreed.

“It’s the hotel that’s haunted,” Gwyn continued.
“The bar is infest—”

“Stop that,”
Brenda interrupted angrily. “That’s what I started to say before. If you really
want to do this, there are conditions. We have to stop with all the
hocus-pocus.”

“For example?”
Gwyn asked.

“Number one,”
Brenda said, “the hotel is not
haunted. It’s an old building, Gwyn. I know you love it. But you have to admit
it’s not in the best of shape. The walls are too thin, the stairs creak, the
pipes make noises, the lights flicker, it’s drafty—that’s all normal.

“And maybe you
think it sounds romantic, but when you tell our guests that the hotel is
haunted—”

“Which it is.”

“—you’re just
calling attention to the hotel’s deficiencies.”

“What else?” Luke
asked, jumping in before the girls got into it. Too much of his childhood had
been spent watching the two of them fight and make up.

“Number two. There
is no boggart in the bar.”

“Okay, stop,” he
said, starting to get annoyed himself. “Now you’re going too far. You don’t
know that for a fact.”

Brenda shook her
head. “C’mon, Luke. How’s that even make sense? It’s an Irish bar; what would a
mischief-making Scottish spirit even be doing there?”

Luke grinned. “Making
mischief. Obviously. Besides, it’s people they attach themselves to, I think.
They’re family spirits, like the bean
sidhe. Who’s to say there’s no Scotch-Irish somewhere in our family mix?
There’s some funny stuff goes on in that bar, Bren. I’ve seen it.”

Brenda nodded.
“I’m sure there is. Do you know why people go to a bar in the first place?”

“To have a drink?”
Gwyn suggested.

“Exactly. And what
happens when people have a few too many drinks?”

“We make money?”

“They get clumsy.
They trip over their own feet. Sometimes they fall down. They misplace
things—their keys, their wallets, their phones.”

“Their clothes?”
Gwyn smiled at her cousin. Brenda ignored her.

“They make stupid
jokes and play stupid pranks and generally act—”

“Stupidly?” Luke
supplied.

“And that’s all
there is to it. There’s no supernatural troublemaker behind it. The only
spirits in that bar are the ones that come in bottles.”

Brenda glared.
“No, I don’t mean the Blarney Stone,” she repeated mockingly. “For fuck’s sake,
guys. The Blarney Stone is right where it’s always been. In Blarney Castle.
It’s part of the friggin’ wall. No one chipped it out and shipped it across the
ocean.”

“Okay, fine,” Gwyn
said. “I’ll give you that one. I always thought that was crazy. What would the Lia Fiál be doing here?”

“The what now?”
Luke asked.

“The Lia Fiál,”
Gwyn repeated. “The Stone of Destiny? That’s what they used to call it.”

“Oh. Well, then
that actually does make sense, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“That business
about how if you kiss your true love while standing on the stone you’re
destined to be together. Destined—get it?”

“Yes, Luke.” Gwyn
rolled her eyes. “We get it. It’s still crazy.”

“Number four,”
Brenda continued without waiting for the others. “There is no family curse.”

Luke and Gwyn
looked at her in pained surprise. “Well, of course there isn’t,” Luke said.
“You mean the ‘nothing will prosper the family Walsh in Atlas Beach until the
Wild Geese return and are reunited with their loved ones’ nonsense? Yeah,
that’s bullshit.”

Gwyn has her hands full these days trying to help save the family business--a quirky hotel on the Jersey Shore. She has no time for romance. But when the two men with whom she once spent a drunken ménage weekend show up with a sexy proposition, how can she resist? Berke and Cam might have broken her heart seven years ago, but Gwyn is older now and wiser. She’s not looking for forever. She just wants a good time. And, after all, it is Valentine’s Day.

For Berke and Cam, the weekend isn’t just about fun, or adding some spice to their marriage; it’s about winning back the woman who got away, and convincing her to give a committed three-way relationship a shot. They each have skills that could help make the hotel a success—and they’re not above bartering to get what they want. but first they have to get past the walls Gwyn’s built to keep them out. But while Cam’s biggest concern is making sure Gwyn doesn’t break Berke’s heart a second time, Berke is worried about what Cam will think if he learns about Berke’s part in screwing things up the last time around.